Congress leader Sandeep Dikshit on Friday expressed dismay and a "sense of betrayal" over Ghulam Nabi Azad's resignation from the party, and said quitting strengthens the policies, systems and people that made them write the "letter of reform".
Dikshit, a former party MP, was part of the G23 leaders who had written to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi in August 2020 for an organisational overhaul and reforms, saying it was a "banner of reform and not a banner of revolt".
"When I read your letter of resignation, it gave me a sense of dismay and unfortunately, then a sense of betrayal," he wrote to Azad.
His letter came soon after senior Congress leader Ghulam Nabi Azad resigned from all party positions, including its primary membership, ahead of organisational elections and accused the leadership of committing "fraud" on the party in the name of "sham" internal polls.
In his letter, Sandeep Dikshit, son of former Delhi chief minister Sheila Dikshit, told Azad that he has known him in his capacity as a citizen of India, Congress sympathiser, Congress worker and then as Congress MP. He said he had great respect for Azad's work and ability.
"I wholeheartedly and in full agreement signed the letter that you had written to the Congress president, and became a part of what some media people called the G23.
"The matter we raised in that letter, and the spirit in which many of us signed it and many others supported what was written in it, was in many ways a pathway to revitalise this greatest of political parties, that lies, as you say in your letter also, in its darkest abyss today. But to my mind, we, and I in it, had raised the banner of reform, not a banner of revolt," the former Delhi MP said.
He said that by joining the signatories to the letter, he knew quite well that along with his constant public articulation of how he believed the Congress should strengthen itself, "I will never ever have a personal political future in it".
The Delhi Congress leader said it was his great hope that both the weight of the suggestions and the commitment towards the party of the signatories made this a worthwhile exercise.
Noting that the fight to "retain the true spirit and mind of our great nation" was the real goal of the battle for reviving the Congress, he said, "Therefore it was equally important to remain inside the party, fight both policy and people, whichever and whoever we believe had and were damaging the party."
"But leaving the party unfortunately strengthens the very policies, systems and people that made us write our letter of reform as a demand, as a duty and as our right. The Indian National Congress will be that much weaker without Ghulam Nabi Azad, but the Ghulam Nabi Azad who authores the G23 letter, not the Ghulam Nabi Azad who authored this resignation," Dikshit said in his letter to Azad.